


in the valley.

by outpastthemoat



Series: song of songs [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-02
Updated: 2014-08-02
Packaged: 2018-02-10 09:11:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2019417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/outpastthemoat/pseuds/outpastthemoat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean rests.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in the valley.

Dean almost never gets a good night’s sleep.  He almost never sleeps through police sirens, through lightning, through thunder or gunshots or tires squealing outside his windows. He almost never sleeps straight through the night.

He rises from his bed in a sleepless haze and walks around rubbing his face until his eyes turn red and he stumbles into things: doors, chairs, the scimitar display in the library, his brother.

“You should get some rest,” Sam tells him, and Dean immediately adopts a wild grin and waggling eyebrows.  He might come across as a little cracked round the edges.  

“Rest is for the weak,” he says back, like he hasn’t spent good, honest money purchasing instrumental music tracks and Lifescapes albums off iTunes, like he’s never spent hours downloading white noise .mp3 files to his iPod, tracks of rainstorms and the sound of waves crashing on the beach, building playlists of tinkling piano music, of gentle harp melodies, of Celtic flutists; like he does not listen to those tracks every night in a halfhearted attempt to obtain some measure of rest.  Once he had even snuck away from Sam’s prying eyes into what was either a bookstore that also dealt in coffee or a coffeeshop that also sold books and, because he didn’t have the grit to actually stand in line and plunk down a credit card that didn’t even have his own name embossed on it for such an item, had shoplifted some New Agey self-hypnosis book with a tape included. He had secretly loaded it up in the Impala’s tape deck, he had driven fifty-seven miles away from the bunker in tense, jittery silence before pulling over to the side of the road and turning up the volume.  Imagine a jungle at night, a soothing female voice had told him, imagine the savanna at dawn.  Feel peace bloom in your heart like a flower in the desert.  He hadn’t.  He never does.

 —

He goes out and buys new sheets: Egyptian cotton, 800-thread count; he runs them through the washing machine with half a cup of vinegar to soften them. He sticks them in the dryer with three lavender scented dryer sheets and he actually stands there in the laundry room until the cycle is over, staring at the vibrating machine, waiting.  The sheets come out smelling faintly of spring and when he rubs his cheek against them he finds that the sheets are softer than anything he has ever felt.  Softer than his old t-shirts, worn thin with wear, softer than the blanket he remembers carrying to bed in his memories from before the fire.

He shoves the sheets under Sam’s nose. “Smell them,” he orders, and Sam does.  They stand like that in the hallway for a while, sniffing Dean’s sheets.

“Nice,” Sam allows.

He strips his bed and remakes it. He adds a pillow top mattress on top of the memory foam, he covers his bed with the fitted sheet, he adds layers of blankets on top.  He finds himself circling around his bed, patting it gently, like a dog turning around in its bed before settling down into sleep.  He climbs under the covers and stretches his bare legs against the soft cool sheets and glories in them.   But it isn’t enough.

He turns over and over, resettling himself.  He lies on his side and takes his pillow and sticks it under his cheek and tries to sleep.

A beach, he tells himself.  He lets his toes curl underneath those wonderful, wonderful sheets.  He pretends he is burying his toes in warm pink sand, the kind of sand that is as fine as sugar.  But the truth of it is that he is always aware of a wilderness surrounding him, like a hedge of briers, like he is the only man in a desert, always searching for water, shelter, something he can never seem to find.  

He thinks of a quiet pool and cool water.  He can almost hear it,  the sound of pebbles striking against the rocks, the splash they made as they fell into the water.

He doesn’t sleep.

—

Dean goes back to the store the next day and walks up and down the pillow aisle.  He fills a cart with pillows: firm pillows, soft pillows, thin pillows, fluffy pillows.  He buys a neck support pillow, he buys European-sized pillows, he buys lumbar support pillows.  He finds the sometime-there, sometimes-not-there section that sells extra long sheets to newly minted college students and lava lamps and dry erase boards with magnetic strips on the backs and he fills his shopping cart with body pillows.  

That night he arranges pillows around him on his bed, a barrier of pillows that starts at the head of his bed and go down to the foot, one wall of pillows on each side.  He puts a thick pillow under his head and a thin pillow under his back.  He turns over and grabs the body pillows, draping an arm over one and pulling it close to his chest and that works better.  A teddy bear, he thinks, maybe that’s what he needs.  Something to hold on to.

But he lies awake in an empty room feeling raw and open and restless, feeling obscurely like he’d left a stove burner on, or the coffeepot.  He tosses and turns.  He gets no rest.

He tries pulling his sheets up over his head, the way he used to sleep as a little kid.  He would line the edges of his bed with pillows and blankets and the one or two stuffed animals his father had allowed them to keep, and tug Sam up onto the bed with him.  He would pretend it was just the two of them, lost at sea, drifting along with the current.  But alive.  Together.  Everything he loved, together with him on a boat.  It had felt so nice.  

He closes his eyes and imagines his boat, a boat he builds by hand, a boat that takes him years to finish.  He builds his boat out of cedar, he cuts the boards and builds the frame and covers it with tar, and years later, when he is finished, he goes to find his family.  He places Sam on board, tapes a photograph of his mother to the mast, parks the Impala in the hold.  

But something’s missing still, so he sails the seas for days, for months, for years, and finally he drops anchor at the foot of a mountain.  He takes Castiel’s hand, and brings him on board.

He dreams of his little family, safe  and snug inside his boat as the rain goes on falling around them, as the water rises.  Dreams of a day when the storm dies down and the sea stops surging.  Dreams of twisting an olive branch around his fingers, looking up in the sky and finally, finally knowing that he has done it: He has kept them safe.  He has brought them home.

His heart just beats a little easier when he is surrounded by his family, when he can hold them close, when he can close his eyes with the knowledge that the ones he loves are safe, are happy, are home.  

My family, he thinks, and suddenly his soul is at ease.

That night Dean lies in his bed and instead of a beach, he hears the sound of Sam’s pen as he jots down notes in the library.  Instead of the jungle, he hears the sounds of pots banging in the kitchen, of plates clattering, water boiling in the kettle.  Instead of rushing water and waterfalls, he hears Castiel’s quiet footsteps by the door, walking up and down the hall in his socked feet.

He rests easy for a while.

— 

He finds that he breathes easier when Castiel is near.

There is a particular quiet when Castiel is by his side that eases the restlessness that builds up when Castiel is out of time, out of place, in the ether, all this pent up energy, wanting to run, wanting to drive, the way his leg twitches and his fingers tap, the silence that fills him up and threatens to swallow him like the sea, a drowning man.

This must be peace, he thinks at the end of the day, when the hunt is over, when the monsters are gone; when he drops his knife and reaches out for Castiel and finds that Castiel is already reaching for him, when they stagger to each other and lean against the wall, when they are holding each each other as they sink to the floor.  He is being held oh so carefully.  He could rest here, in these arms.  

He is struck by a new certainly: wherever Castiel is, there is peace. Even in hell, even in death, he’ll gladly follow; Dean would walk the whole world over once, twice, a thousand times just to get a taste of this kind of peace, just to catch a glimpse of this promised land.

He drives his little family home through a rainstorm, through a sky lit up with lightening, even when his tires skid over the pools of water collecting at the edges of he road, his heart is light, his soul is at rest.  

They get home and Castiel drops down on the couch and Dean is still struck by this newfound sense of peace that he can’t walk away, he can’t keep from staring at Castiel’s arms, draped over a pillow, he can’t keep himself from imagining what it might feel like to fall asleep in those arms.  He thinks that if he could be held like that again, get a taste of real rest, just once more, maybe he would fall asleep and never wake back up again.  

He wonders if humans aren’t meant to spend every night alone.  

Maybe he’s been doing it wrong all these years.

“Scoot over,” he says, and Castiel blinks up at him for a long moment, and draws his legs up briefly.  Dean sits down and tugs Castiel’s feet into his lap until they are sitting close on the couch, with Castiel taking up the entire length of the couch, his face against the armrest, with his feet draped in Dean’s lap.   

“Dean?”

"Shh," he says.  "Go back to sleep."  

Castiel’s legs are heavy and warm and it’s so, so nice just to be sitting with someone, just to have someone near.  Dean idly traces the edge of Castiel’s feet with his fingers.  He touches the soft bare skin of his instep, strokes a circle around his ankle.  It’s not a burden. it’s a pleasant weight, a sense of belonging.  

Dean sets his head fall back on the couch, lets himself just rest with Castiel, curled up by his side, breathing easy for a while: two heads nodding, eyes blinking shut. Sitting still and letting the world spin along without them for once, just to watch the lines in Castiel’s face smooth out, just to watch his chest move up and down under his shirt, just to enjoy a moment of peace, to celebrate this victory, to spent one lingering moment knowing that this unsteady world will give him another day to watch the sun rise once again, another day with Castiel in it.

If there is any peace to be found, he will find it here.

He closes his eyes and goes to find it.

—

When he opens his eyes again, he sees Castiel’s face, gazing at him with solemn sleepy eyes, propping himself up on his elbows.  

“Don’t get up,” Dean tells him.  He grabs for Castiel, aiming for his wrist or his hand or his sleeve. He plans to grab ahold and hang on until the world eases back out, washing away like the tide.  He reckons it might take a while.  Maybe forever.  

Castiel lets himself be caught.  "I’m tired," he says.  

“Good,” Dean says. “Then let’s go to bed.”

—

Dean lets himself sink down on the wonderful, wonderful sheets of his bed until he feels like a stone dropped into water: he can almost feel the ripples surrounding him, moving outward. He lets his gaze follow Castiel around the room as he unpacks his bag, and then he lets his eyes drift shut and breathes in and out and listens to the quiet, agreeable sounds that Castiel makes as he dumps his duffel bag upside over the dresser and lets all his things drop down, the soft thuds of socks and shirts and the louder, intrusive sounds of boots being tossed into a corner.  He indulges himself in this pleasant feeling of weightlessness, like floating in space, and after a while he feels a weight settle on the bed next to him.

Dean rolls over and pushes his face into Castiel’s chest, the center of him, presses his face hard against the warm steady beat he finds there.  This is what peace feels like, he thinks. He closes his eyes and he pulls a book down from a shelf in his memory, the cracking and ancient Old Testament Sam had discovered in their library not so long ago.  He flips the book open to the beginning and looks at the illustration there, two lost souls in the garden.  He uses that memory.  He drifts in a dream, half-awake, half-asleep, he dreams of clear water and pale skies.  He dreams up a secret valley, grown over with trees, with cypress, fig, lotus, olive, myrtle, a garden with flowers in bloom under his feet as he walks down the hills: he thinks of cyclamen, hyacinth, crocus, narcissus; madonna lilies and irises. He walks in his valley for a while, marvelling at the green against the gold of the sky. There are no graves here.  

“What are you thinking about?”  Castiel sounds curious, wondering. It’s the voice he reserves for miracles, for marveling.  Dean has heard him use that voice to exclaim over small creatures, the pattern of lines in a leaf, tiny carvings made out of wood.  

“Nice things. Happy things,”  Dean tells him. He’s babbling, he’s out out his mind. He is going to say something crazy or wonderful, something like  _I love you_ or  _You bring me peace_.  He’s sleep-deprived, he can’t help it.  “You.  And me.  Hidden valleys.”

“I prefer Newman’s Own,” Castiel says serenely.

"I’m not talking about salad dressing," he says.  At moments like this Dean can’t help but stare up at him, awed and amazed, wondering at the realization that he has somehow built a world around this person, a tiny universe, a microcosm, where Castiel is the sun and moon and stars, the blackness of space, the ground underfoot; in this moment he is the is the rain and sky, sunrise and sunset: he is the single untarnished golden thread running through the fabric of Dean’s life.  He is there in Dean’s valley.

Castiel bows his head down and fits it against Dean’s, until Dean can feel their cheeks pressed together, and suddenly he feels like laughing, crying, both at the same time or neither.   Two lost souls.  He leans his head against Castiel’s forehead, thinking that this must be where Castiel’s hopes and dreams must reside. Dean wants to discover them all, look through each one, make them come true.  Does Castiel dream about cotton sheets or myrtle groves or the sound of water running down a mountain? Dean wants to know.  

“Rest,” Castiel says, against his ear.

He does.

**Author's Note:**

> The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.  
> He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.  
> He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.  
> Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me.


End file.
